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Why Blog Writers Should Create Evergreen Content

Blog writers need a strategy right out of the gate. If they fail to plan, well, they’re planning to fail. Writing content for websites is no different than any other facet of life. Preparation is essential.

We’ve all seen the “just write as much as you can” advice that some people tell website content writers with a new blog. The problem stems when these business owners write for months and still aren’t getting any traffic to their site.

As a remedy you may start researching online. When you find phrases like SEO and evergreen content, confusion builds and blog writing becomes more of a chore than an interesting way to benefit your business.

Luckily, at iWebContent, we’ve navigated the murky content writing waters, and our experienced content marketers have detailed exactly what evergreen content is and how you can create it.

What’s Evergreen Content?

Evergreen content isn’t too complicated. It’s simply content that’s applicable to your business, useful to your customers and timeless (with an emphasis on timelessness). Certain blog posts lose their value over time. Evergreen content is meant to last “forever,” or in the fast-paced age of the Internet – at least a couple of years.

Evergreen content got its name from evergreen trees. Evergreen trees stay green year ’round. Evergreen content is meant to remain useful and relevant all year ’round, too. For example, a post about “SEO Best Practices” could never be evergreen because Google changes its algorithm often. On the other hand, a post about “The Basics of SEO” has the potential to be evergreen. Even better, a post titled “What is SEO?” should stay relevant as long as search engine optimization is relevant.

What’s Not Evergreen!

We want to make sure we leave no stone unturned. To further clarify what is great content for the long term and what is not, here are a few content types that could never be considered evergreen:

Trends

News

Pop culture

Fads

Statistics based articles that quickly go out of date

Why Blog Writers Should Create Evergreen Content

Now that we’ve given beginner content writers an idea about evergreen blog posts, it’s important to note why this long-form content is so valuable to blog writers. If you’re hoping to run a successful blog over the course of many years, then evergreen content is vital. It may be the most important factor influencing the success of your site. Here’s why:

It’s For the Long Haul. First and foremost, blog writers create evergreen content because it’s meant to last. The only reason you create this type of content is to drive traffic to your blog for years to come. And the only way to get regular traffic is to bring a lot of value and details.

It’s Easier. Creating one long article that details everything your audience needs to know is easier than creating a bunch of short pieces. Plus, you’ll get more search engine traffic from one evergreen article than a number of short articles. This allows you to write less, but write more in-depth.

It Adds Great Value to Your Readers. More words mean more value. A 500-word piece on SEO can only touch the surface, but a 3,000-word ultimate guide to SEO can solve a lot of problems for fellow blog writers.

Google Loves It.Not only do your readers love evergreen articles, but Google does, too. If you write a great article about a popular keyword and truly write better information than your competitors, Google will reward you with traffic. Lots and lots of traffic! Evergreen content can boost traffic to your website tenfold if done properly.

It Allows for Detailed Advice. Due to the length of evergreen articles, you can really dive deep and comprehensively explain yourself. You can dig into the details of what you’re writing about and truly give your audience something they can use for years to come. This is how you build a fan base. You solve problems for someone, and they continually look to you for future advice.

It’s Amazing For Long-Term Lead Generation. As Google rewards longer content that solves problems with lots of traffic, you’ll continually be able to generate leads when writing in an evergreen manner. The best part of this strategy is the pieces you create should never go out of style. So once Google starts rewarding them, they’ll generate leads for years to come. A blog article can literally work for you as long as the keywords are strong and the information is relevant.

Types of Evergreen Content

We’ve already discussed examples of evergreen content, but I wanted to dive deeper for my fellow blog writers. There are particular types of articles ideal for longer pieces. These articles typically are incredibly educational with useful information for readers.

Some examples of evergreen article ideas include:

“How to…” Articles. This is one of the best forms of evergreen content. These “How to” pieces are simply teaching your audience exactly how to do something in a detailed manner. Just make sure the techniques and advice you dispel won’t change too much in the near future.

List Posts.

“10 Best Lead Generation Techniques Outside the Internet”

“11 Amazing Marketers Every Entrepreneur Should Know”

“7 Best Surf Cities in the World”

“11 Great Places For 20-Somethings In the Southwest”

“21 Ways to Make Money Online”

These are just a few examples of list posts that sites have used as evergreen content. With posts like these, you’ll want to periodically check that all your resources and information are still available, and your tips are still relevant. Revisiting your pieces every six months to make sure they are still relevant should suffice.

Frequently Asked Questions. Earlier in this article, we talked about an article titled, “What is SEO?” This is an example of an FAQ article designed to be evergreen content. Internet marketers know this question comes up more often than not – so writing a long-form blog post about the topic is a great idea. The tricky part about these posts is they have to be unchanging, and most industries significantly change over the years, sometimes over just a few months.

How to Set Up Evergreen Articles For More Traffic

If you write your evergreen content in a manner that Google likes (long, well-written, problem solving, with original images, etc.), then you’ll find traffic flowing into your site. However, you don’t have to solely rely on search engines to send traffic to your evergreen content.

The easiest way to ensure people find your evergreen articles any time they visit your site is to make them readily available. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds. To begin, just create a “Start Here” page on your blog and place most of your evergreen content on this page.

You can also add a “Top Posts” widget to your sidebar and make the content readily available. Lastly, you can create guides that offer detailed advice on a full range of items relating to one topic. Then feature your evergreen articles in these informative guides.

The ABCs of Evergreen Content: Always. Be. Creating.

Crafting evergreen content might seem too good to be true at this point. You just throw 2,000 words into a “How to…” article and watch Google generate leads for you overnight. I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear it doesn’t exactly work that way.

Evergreen articles only work for blogs that are continually creating. If you stop posting, you’ll find your evergreen staples start to drop in the rankings. So it’s imperative to continually be creating new content if you want your best content to continue to get hits in search engines.

The Downfall of Evergreen Content

Lastly, there is one huge negative to evergreen content – there’s no guarantee. Nothing involving organic traffic is ever guaranteed. Google changes with the seasons. You’ll never know when your piece could get bumped down or if search engines will reward the piece in the first place.

Unless you know how to do keyword research and write great pieces, there’s a decent chance you’ll invest lots of time and energy into creating evergreen articles for you blog – only to see no benefits. Evergreen articles have to be good. Scratch that – they have to be great!

When you’re writing content you hope will beat everyone in Google and be top three for years to come, it has to be spectacular. Evergreen content needs to “beat” other articles that shoot for the same keyword. This means your content needs to be better than all the other pieces on the first page of Google for your given keyword.

So select a keyword. Research and make sure the term gets good traffic. Then type it into Google. Open up all ten links on the first page and start analyzing them. If they’re all from websites like Amazon.com, YouTube.com, Forbes.com or major publications, then you may be out of luck.

Google gives ranking to these sites. If you see a bunch of content from small blogs like yours, then you have a winning keyword! Now you just have to beat their content. The question for you is, can you?

The Experienced Content Marketers You Need

At iWebContent, we’ve been crafting content on the Internet for years. Well, decades actually. Turning words into dollars is what we specialize in. We also understand writing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

While you might not be the best writer, chances are you’re the best at running your business. If you don’t have time to write the evergreen content your blog needs to succeed, we do! We specialize in content writing services and we have the expertise to help your content show up where you want it in Google.

Get in touch today and let us craft the evergreen articles your blog needs to succeed. Lead generation isn’t an easy thing, but evergreen pieces are the closest thing to a sure one. We are looking forward to crafting the content you need soon.

Want to know more ways to generate web traffic through content marketing? Click here for a download of our FREE eBook, 15 Content Creation Tips to Boost Your Small Business. It’s 15 of the best ways to put your website to work for you.